Gundam creator has harsh words for manga and anime hit “Attack on Titan”

Say what you will about Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino, he’s nothing if not outspoken. Previously, we covered Tomino’s somewhat incendiary remarks about kids addicted to video games, and he’s well known in Japan for being less than enthusiastic about rival mecha manga and anime.

Now he’s crossed genres to take aim at Japan’s most recent pop culture export, Attack on Titan – which we suppose defies genres as an alternate universe story about weird giant people attacking towns.

At the same time that Tomino praised Attack on Titan creator Hajime Isayama for leaning on his experience as a bullied child to draw the titular monstrous titans of the series, he railed against the illustration style as crude and grotesque.

Tomino elaborated that he feels violence and grotesque depictions are on the same level as pornography and he doesn’t even want to talk about Attack on Titan, let alone read it.

The Gundam director has gained a reputation for his straight talk and opinionated rants, to the point that he’s given platforms specifically to spout his against-the-grain philosophies on several popular blogs, and like many of his other musings, there appears to be a deeper, more humanistic message beneath the gruff exterior, possibly about how artists ought to sufficiently remove themselves from their own stories.

Still, we can’t help but feel that Tomino is just a little intimidated by the success of Attack on Titan, as Tomino’s Gundam series arguably reached its zenith years ago and – while far from having fallen by the wayside – certainly doesn’t make the waves it used to. Perhaps Tomino is jealousof allthe RocketNews24 coverage Attack on Titan is getting these days.